A Work in Progress

Like myself, I think many artists have a love/hate relationship with getting feedback. Even the most jaded and suspicious of us secretly bask in the glow of praise. Of candid criticism—not so much.

On that thought, this is just a little something that passed through my mind this week . . . adopting the steps of this widely-known model to stages of dealing with feedback of our work:

• Denial

  This reviewer is an idiot. It’s not my fault that they have such narrow tastes in art. They’re obviously not my intended audience.

• Anger

  They completely missed the point of the piece! It must be sad to have such a narrow view of life that you can’t relate to any of my characters!

• Bargaining

  What if I changed the gender of this secondary character and made this one’s hair brown? How about if I cut out 1,000 words out of the middle? What if I change the typeface?

• Depression

  Fine. I get it. All of my work is worthless. I don’t know why I even spend time trying. I might as well give up. Where’s the shredder?

• Acceptance

  Okay. Maybe they have a point here . . . here . . . and here. The build-up does take a little too long. Yeah, I guess the exposition does go on a bit here and could use more dialogue and less description. Yes . . . I suppose the three-page diversion into the main characters obsession with goldfish in second-grade is unnecessary and doesn’t really move the story along . . .

Artists out there: Do you agree?